


suck up on the dregs, sister

by firstaudrina



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series, Timeline What Timeline, cameos from all the kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22313167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Fiona takes care of things. It’s what she does.
Relationships: Fiona Gallagher & Monica Gallagher
Comments: 12
Kudos: 54





	suck up on the dregs, sister

**Author's Note:**

> This mostly follows canon up to Season 4, but it's all set pre-series.

Fiona’s eleven and her mother won’t get out of bed, so she gets Lip and Ian ready for school — toothpaste on brushes, books in bags, whatever’s in the fridge packed up in brown paper. She feeds Debbie and rings the bell next door so their half-senile neighbor will send her dropout daughter to check on her during the day. Fiona has to run to catch the bus but she gets to school, even though her homework’s not done and the fucking teacher humiliates her in front of everyone, stands at the front of the room and says, “ _Again_ , Miss Gallagher?”

During gym, Lucy Kinney and her dumb fucking friends chant _dirty girl_ in a low rumble behind Fiona’s back. It’s not her fault; she had to make sure Lip and Ian and Debbie were clean and by the time she was done there was no hot water, so she scrubbed rough behind her ears under the cold tap. It just wasn’t enough. Fiona turns and cracks the nearest girl in the face. They pile on her. Fiona’s the only one who gets suspended, but at least there’s someone home with Debbie for the next three days.

Monica gets her shit together when Fiona’s fifteen. It’s not the first time, or the last. Frank takes off for three months and Monica stays on her meds for six; she can be trusted on her own with the little ones as long as Frank’s not there. Sure, Fiona comes home to the furniture rearranged and the house painted all different colors; they eat nonsense meals that Monica pronounces “Thai-Irish fusion” or whatever the fuck, but they’re eating. Fiona’s stomach does not un-knot, but she snatches up all that new free time with both grubby hands, just like a Gallagher. She joins school choir. She runs track. 

She runs every single day before school, while the neighborhood is still dark and the cold air burns in her lungs. She runs six miles with the sound of the train to keep time. But no matter how far she goes, she’s back on their doorstep in time to check in, get the kids on the bus — yes, Lip did his homework, yes, Ian copied off Lip, Debbie’s face is clean and her hair braided, Carl gurgles from the worn-in playpen. Monica laughs and puts her hands on Fiona’s shoulders to push her out the door. “Get outta here!” she says, in her funny, lilting way, like lyrics to a song Fiona doesn’t know. “I’m a grownup, Fi, I got it from here!”

Two weeks before junior year, Fiona comes home from a summer-sticky day at the community pool to find Monica emptying her pills into the toilet. Fiona doesn’t say anything. She just squares up and smothers her sunburnt siblings in dollar store aloe gel, then gets down to making dinner. Monica is gone again by Halloween, so she lasts longer than Fiona expects. 

Fiona makes deliveries for the pharmacy on her morning runs, squirrels away handfuls of pills to sell for a markup, just for a little while, just so she has enough to get every one of the kids a Christmas present. She even gets them a tree. By the time it’s a dried-up husk in the living room, watered only by Frank’s blackout bladder, Fiona knows she won’t be going back to school. 

It’s too bad. She could have made state.

Fiona’s six when they move into what will become The Gallagher House. A cracking foundation, a rough-scrabble yard, and shelves that haven’t been dusted in years — not to mention a chemical smell in the air that makes her sneeze. But it feels like a palace to Fiona after two weeks on the street, three in the car; nights curled up on Uncle Nick’s sofa with Lip and Ian, closing her eyes and pretending to be asleep when Nick and Frank get into shouting matches. 

There are bedrooms. Bed _rooms_ , more than one, enough for her and the boys to each have their own, if they want it. But it takes two months for her to feel at ease enough to branch out, instead dragging her small mattress in next to Ian’s crib, her and Lip putting their pillows side by side. Her heart is always racing. “How?” she keeps asking Frank. She can’t imagine where their good fortune came from. _How?_

Frank swigs a beer at the kitchen counter while Fiona munches Lucky Charms. He glances towards the window that overlooks the backyard. “Thank your Aunt Ginger,” he says, and laughs. Fiona doesn’t get it.

Monica is gone but she’ll be back, and there’ll be another baby before she leaves again. 

Fiona gets her period too soon; she’s only ten. She wakes up in a puddle of blood that she dutifully cleans up before locking herself in the bathroom to cry, a rough dry sob that echoes in her chest like Frank’s bad cough. It’s not because she doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s because she does.

She’s good at crying without making a sound, but somehow Monica hears her, or senses it, something latent and maternal being set off inside her. Or maybe it’s a coincidence and she just has to pee because she’s pregnant again. “Fi?” she says, soft and achy. “Fi-fi?”

Fiona stopped letting her mother hug her a long time ago, but somehow she ends up in Monica’s arms, pressed tight against the hard beach ball of her stomach. They don’t know what it’s going to be yet, because Monica wants to be surprised; Fiona thinks the baby is enough of a surprise as it is. “Oh, honey, it’s okay,” Monica coos, kissing Fiona’s hairline. “You’re a woman now! Soon you can borrow my bras.”

She gives Fiona’s side a little pinch that brings up an unexpected, gurgling laugh. Monica tells her about tampons and pads, and says it’s lucky she’s pregnant because now they won’t run out. When Frank bangs on the door, Monica tells him to fuck off, which he does, because he listens to her. Monica wipes Fiona’s cheeks and then takes out her lipstick, bright pink and worn way down, so she can dab it over Fiona’s lips. They look in the mirror together. Monica looks beautiful. Fiona is already all dark circles. “There’s my little lady,” Monica says. “Take it from the outside in. Makes you feel better to look better, right?”

Sometimes Monica will talk softly to Lip when he gets hurt, humming made-up songs into his scrapes — which he always has, because even at six Lip has a preternatural predilection for trouble. And she’s the only one who could make Ian — the most serious toddler in Fiona’s extensive experience — giggle. 

Fiona wants to love Monica, but she feels bad when she does and bad when she doesn’t, so there’s really no way to win.

Fiona does it, you know. She’s six and eight and ten and thirteen. She brings Monica toast in bed. Candy. Slices of cake. A joint, once. She thinks, _get out of bed, Mom. Get out of bed. Get out of bed, Mom. Get up_. 

She does it. Then she does it so Lip doesn’t have to and Ian doesn’t have to, because Debbie and Carl can’t. It doesn’t matter anyway because it’ll take the time that it takes. Soon they’ll cycle back around to pancake breakfasts and late night parties and spending sprees. Until then Fiona can do it, or she can try to, even though she’s exhausted. She’s never not been exhausted.

But one day she just stops. And she starts thinking, instead, _Get out_.

Fiona starts telling people she’s twenty before she even hits her eighteenth birthday. It makes things easier, and nobody really questions it. Eighteen with a bunch of kids has people wondering, eighteen invites questions, but twenty is adult, almost polished. The I.D. is easy. She starts saying it so much that she almost forgets, and everyone else forgets too. She’s spent so many years sticking stray bills in empty cans for safekeeping, scraping Frank off the floor, doing laundry, washing dishes. She could be forty and believe it.

She only ever tells V, who says, “Shit, girl, you the only woman alive to lie about her age in reverse.” 

Fiona is twenty, or nineteen. She works all day and works all night, switches out one job for the next and never stops moving. She wonders how many miles it all translates to — cleaning hotel rooms and cleaning the house, going shopping for school supplies with holes in her pockets, watering down the OJ and skipping breakfast so the kids have more. It’s gotta be more than six miles a day. 

Monica is gone and then she’s back. She and Frank wake them up in the middle of the night for movie marathons, they vanish for days on a bender. Fiona works. Debbie stands behind her in the kitchen, peering around her hip at the woman she doesn’t really know very well, back and pregnant again. “Our perfect little angel, Frankie,” Monica says, hands on her stomach. She has baby names sketched out on a napkin. 

Fiona thinks, _what about Debbie? What about Carl?_ She never thinks _what about me_ anymore. She just squares up and makes dinner, forges Frank’s name on permission slips and checks homework she never did when she was in school.

Monica leaves and Frank was never really there and the crib is full again. Fiona goes into the downstairs bathroom and shuts the door sometimes, sucks in all the air in the room and chokes on it.

Then she goes out and does it all again.


End file.
